A Slice of Time
by deeh
Summary: “Why this, Granger?" He yelled, "Why now? Is the verge of death a convenient time for you?" DHr One-shot. DH/Epilogue Compliant.


A/N: Just a little something I whipped up in my insomnia.

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He had no idea what to say.

There she sat, in her white linen hospital bed, engulfed by a gaggle of her red-haired offspring. Although clearly ill, she was perched and brooding over them like the mother hen of fecundity, with her greying curls, beige lace and hordes of children fawning over her. Some of them had straight hair like the majority of the carrot-topped family. However, others resembled their grandmother, and like Gryffindor lions and lionesses they sported unruly, recalcitrant manes. Regardless, their hair blended in with the Gryffindor-themed flowers.

All of them were Weasleys of varying generations. Her children and grandchildren, of course.

Speechless, he attempted to be formidable in obsidian silk and velvet but managed only to lurk awkwardly in the doorway. He felt like the carnivorous wolf amidst a herd of bouncing lambs, like the black dot on the canvas. He also had every damned intention to pivot one-hundred and eighty degrees and march straight back to the nearest apparition point. For Merlin's sake, what was he doing here?

"What are _you_ doing here?"

Good question.

Draco sighed, and carefully turned on his dragon-hide boots – fresh from the box – to face the pride of crimson-maned lions gawking pointedly at him. Their gazes were almost accusatory as though he was an unwanted guest, and most likely, he was. The older of the Weasley children, the adults, were quick to judge with glares of bequeathed suspicion and hereditary enmity. They looked upon him with slight condescension as though he were the inebriated neighbour who occasionally stumbled through the white picket fence and into the yard, crushing the meticulously trimmed gardenias. Or at least that's what he assumed the Weasley hovel – correction, _house_ – looked like. In all his years, he had never gathered the courage or the audacity to check.

"What are you doing here?"

The question repeated. It was the older Weasley, her son, the one with the horrid misnomer. Ah, yes. Hugo. Scorpius had mentioned Hugo a few times in the Ministry. Pain in the arse, that one. Like his father was.

"I was invited." Draco explained promptly, allowing a hint of his customary drawl to permeate his speech. Naturally, as a Malfoy he harboured an exceptional aversion to being unwelcome or looked down upon. No one looked down upon a Malfoy. Especially not the Weasleys.

Hugo responded with a dubious look. However Draco Malfoy was being far from mendacious. He _was_ invited, by the only other person in the room that did not boast scarlet follicles. Hugo's oceanic eyes immediately shifted towards his mother and her frail lips moulded themselves into an upturned quiver. Despite her feebleness, she accomplished the traces of a reassuring smile and an expression that conveyed it was safe to leave.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded solemnly and clasped his hand in hers. Reluctantly Hugo turned from his mother and led the herd out, meanwhile granting Draco an arrogant bravado of contempt. He gritted his teeth in order to prevent himself from scowling at the boy in front of his ailing mother.

"I don't care if you're Scorpius' father. You hurt her and you're dead," he muttered as he left.

Like he said, pain in the arse, that one.

So the Malfoy patriarch and the Weasley matriarch remained, staring at each other across the gulf of standard issue hospital linoleum and the silence that spanned in between.

He decided to break the silence, for Malfoys didn't beat around the bush. They whipped out their wands and _incendio_-ed it to a pile of ashes.

"What, Granger?" He couldn't bear to associate her with _that _name, and refused to call her anything else other than the name that was hers. His voice was gruff, clearly uncomfortable. At this, she broke into a genially radiant smile. The fact that she was genuinely smiling at him made him feel terribly awkward and scrutinised. The severely sterile air choked him as though the bleach itself filled the air, thickening the atmosphere making it strenuous to breathe.

"What do you want?" He asked her softly, for fear of his voice breaking.

The quick notes quill beside her began to move across a notepad. It was a marvel that he had failed to notice it before. The large eagle-feather quill was long, majestic and very much unlike the ostentatious peacock feather that he frequently had been interviewed with by Rita Skeeter. When the quill merely hovered in the air, she passed the note to him. It read one word.

_Time_

It was a wonder how the quill was able to duplicate her painfully neat scrawl perfectly. He looked to her, confused. "Can't you speak?"

_No_

"Why?"

_Now is not the time. _She looked to him, large brown eyes pleading.

"So you want time," he concluded with a sigh as he drew up a chair and sat down, "but now is not the time? Beggars can't be choosers, Granger." He chuckled then, the look she gave him was patented from their petty schooling years. It was difficult to conceive, Hermione Granger, the woman who always had a voice not only for herself, but for many, the woman who had stood and advocated for those who had no choice but to be silent, was sitting here, unable to speak. By the god of irony, she was sitting across Draco Malfoy, the man with the voice most people begged to be silenced lest they suffer his caustic conversational quips.

Draco noticed that she was wringing her wrists and fisting the blankets, a nervous habit – he remembered. Quite anxious himself, he placed a hand on hers and willed himself not to tremble. When his uncharacteristically warm hand covered her cold and clammy one, she glanced at him with frightened eyes. Those eyes, so wide and innocent and yet so wise spoke to him volumes of a language he couldn't quite understand although he knew he should.

"Why, Granger? Why am I here? What do you want?"

This time, the quick quotes quill wrote only two words, adding to the first one. When she nudged it towards him, it read.

_Time. WITH YOU._

"Why?" he asked through gritted teeth, his eyes burning, "Why? Why now? Why after all these years?" 

Tears glazed her eyes now, those eyes heavy with longing. Once he regarded them merely as a plain muddy brown. But now as they called to him, speaking words her voice could not, he found himself drowning in gaping pools flecked with cinnamon and gold.

The quick quotes quill drew him from her sombre gaze.

_I'm dying. _

"You're _what?_"

The quill underlined the sentence.

"But -"

She silenced his shocked protests with a finger to his lips and drew her attention back to the notepad. His lips burned.

_Do you remember what I said to you when we were together in sixth year? Before all of this happened? _

By 'all of this,' he knew that she wasn't only referring to the war. She was referring to their lives. She meant her children, his children, their grandchildren – their _whole_ lives. It seemed as though in sixth year, on some elevated plain, in the plateau of the lost and melancholy they existed together outside the sphere of their world. Now a lifetime later, her dying wish was to journey and return to that exterior yet private place.

_Do you remember Draco?_

He hesitated, before beginning at last, reiterating what she had said word for word. "You said," he tried evenly, "'if things were different, I could love you.'"

They used to meet. In sixth year, he finally danced a vicious tango with the true reality of death, instead of fancifully looking up her skirt. He found his comfort in the most unlikely of characters, first in Myrtle and then in Hermione, whom of which Myrtle had also discovered taking refuge in one of the castle's top grade u-bends of dejection. He was born into adult life crying as a newborn should. She was the best friend of Harry Potter. Enough said. Forget stage parents, child stars and beauty queens. Consider child war heroes.

His silver stare found her chocolate gaze as the memories oozed across them, and the tears melted from her eyes. Yet he was unable to shed the heat prickling his vision, instead he found himself on the edge of reason and on a precipice falling into a paroxysm. He was furious with her.

Draco Malfoy leapt from his seat and proceeded to yell at her. "Why this, Granger?" He pointed madly at her question on the parchment. "Why now? Is the verge of death a _convenient_ time for you? Have you decided to finally fuck it all and fall in love with me? Believe it or not, you're still alive, you have a life, I have a life, and we have responsibilities we can't ignore -"

He broke off into a derisive laugh. To think that _he_ was lecturing her on responsibility!

Hermione received his railing in caged silence, powerless to interrupt. The crashing stillness he received in place of her response was sufficient to make him feel a certain twist of guilt within his gut. He struck her with a weapon she didn't have. However, although she was vulnerable to his scathing tongue, she was not defenceless. The sudden power, rolling like thunder behind her eyes, began to speak to him a thousand times her words could not.

He was glad that he had turned away, for he knew that if he looked at her now, he wouldn't be able to leave. Still, her gaze kept him there like a leaden guard, grappling with him on a bridge's parapet, barring his access to the welcoming and seemingly open exit.

_I realised something. _

The parchment flew to him from across his shoulder. He took it, respecting her enough to indulge his curiosity and turn back around. Praying for strength, he released a deep breath he didn't know he was holding, and reclaimed his seat by her side. He watched her impatient eyes, conveying to him what the quick quill was too slow to write.

_Love shouldn't be a luxury. _

"But you loved Ron." He responded automatically. She nodded and they waited as the quill scratched more.

_He was not there when it mattered. _

_Life never asked us what we wanted. Instead, we should have taken it. _

"You have wondered, as I have, how our lives would have been different if we were together..." said Draco, resigned. It was a statement, not a question. They were older now, different.

_I do not regret my life. _

"So what now, Hermione? Do you want to sit here, as we do now, wondering how our lives could have been different? Happier?" He looked away bitterly into the emptiness of white. "It's useless."

Only when she clasped his angry fist in her frail and clammy hand, did he calm. She was shaking her head, telling him that today was not the time for 'if only' and 'what ifs.' It was too late.

The quill pressed a slow progressive line across the page.

_Time. WITH YOU. _

He looked at the three words in amazement and began to realise. She was giving him a gift. She was saying goodbye and something else. With her eloquent eyes and quivering smile, those three words echoed another triple-worded phrase that they were once too frightened to say to one another – and still had never said to each other.

"But there is no time, Granger," he protested as he tried to forcibly remove the lump in his throat. "You're _dying_."

For once, her eyes were unreadable. She stared at him intently, leaned forward and whispered soundlessly against his lips.

_Now is enough. _

Review as you please =)


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